Notable Quotables - 09/30/1991

Published: 9/30/1991 1:00 AM ET

Sexual
Harassment: Reagan's Fault

"Tonight, the NBC
News program Expose looks at incidences of sexual harassment in [federal
low-income] housing. It's reported by correspondent Michele Gillen....Well, I
guess that's where the problem began. Actually, it was when the budget was
taken out of the affordable housing market during the Reagan years and thus,
the problem came about."- Today co-host Bryant Gumbel,
September 20.

Making Excuses
for Harkin

"[Presidential
candidate Tom Harkin] often declines to let accuracy ruin a witty line or
blunt a political dart...But voters tend to ignore such details, and Harkin's
obviously heartfelt commitment to his causes overshadows his lapses."
- Time political correspondent Laurence Barrett, September 23.

Natural Law
Conflicts with Individual Rights?

"On the same day
major groups announced their opposition, Thomas's friends from Georgia showed
up on Capitol Hill. But Thomas has taken controversial positions, such as
suggesting that natural laws may supersede individual rights."
- NBC congressional reporter Andrea Mitchell, September 9 Nightly News.

Two Takes on
Thomas Hearings

Spending $1.4
Trillion Just Not Enough

"Social problems
exist, Americans keep telling pollsters, but there's no sign of any great
national willingness to do much about them...The national response is a yawn.
The President is preoccupied with foreign affairs, the Congress is willing to
do almost anything except spend money, state and local governments are broke
and the citizens don't seem to care very much."
- CBS political reporter Bruce Morton's Evening News commentary,
September 21.

Flattering Fidel

"The government
points out rightly that Cuba's standard of living is better than in many other
countries of the Caribbean and Latin America. There are no filthy children
scrambling over garbage heaps to compete with vultures for scraps of food, as
in El Salvador. There are no death squads preying upon the weakest and
poorest, as in Guatemala. There is none of the festering disease and crushing
poverty that is on display in any village in Haiti or Honduras or Nicaragua.
The violent crime, random killing, and manic drug trade that are Colombia's
scourge, and Jamaica's, are practically unknown in Cuba."
- Washington Post reporter Lee Hockstader, September 12.

Reporter Charles
Bierbauer: "U.S. officials do not see a severe threat to Castro inside
Cuba. Cubans do not seem to hate him."Wayne Smith, Johns
Hopkins University: "While there's disgruntlement in Havana, if you go
out in the countryside, you find continuing and widespread support for Mr.
Castro."
- CNN World News, September 11.

Mondale Could
Have Won Cold War

"I don't want
Charles [Krauthammer] to get the last word on this question of who won the
cold war and to leave hanging in the air the suggestion that Ronald Reagan and
the conservatives won the cold war by producing all these policies that put a
lot of pressure on the Kremlin. The difference from the Kremlin standpoint, a
Soviet Union standpoint, between a conservative Republican administration and
a liberal Democratic administration was not that great. The Soviet Union
collapsed, the cold war ended almost overwhelmingly because of internal
contradictions and pressures within the Soviet Union and the Soviet system
itself. And even if Jimmy Carter had been reelected and been followed by
Walter Mondale, something like what we have now seen probably would have
happened."
- Time Editor-at-Large Strobe Talbott on Inside Washington,
September 21.

Oh No, the End
of Communism

"In towns like
Pushkino (pop. 90,000), many Russians view the tumult sweeping Moscow with
more anxiety and skepticism than do their big-city compatriots...they wonde if
the destruction of Soviet communism will bring them anything more than
uncertainty and hardship."
- Time reporter James Carney, September 9.

The Trains
Didn't Even Run On Time

"Inefficient as the
old communist economy was, it did provide jobs of a sort for everybody and a
steady, if meager, supply of basic goods at low, subsidized prices; Soviet
citizens for more than 70 years were conditioned to expect that from their
government. Says a Moscow worker: 'We had everything during [Leonid]
Brezhnev's times. There was sausage in the stores. We could buy vodka. Things
were normal.'"
- Time Associate Editor George J. Church, September 23.

"Communists have
controlled every factory, every local government, every school. Many of them
are able organizers and administrators."
- NBC Moscow reporter Bob Abernethy, August 29 Today.

I Dunno

"Can the Brain
Provide Clues to Intelligence?"
- New York Times, September 24

Racist
Ridiculousness

"I think the Willie
Horton ads were quite effective. These things [the Thomas ads] are terrible.
They're puerile, they're stupid, they're childish. My first thought about this
was there are some conservatives, believe it or not, Bob, who don't like black
people, and in fact are worried about Clarence Thomas being on the Court. I
had the feeling that these might have been subversive ads to get rid of
Thomas. Thomas is worth more to the conservative movement dead than
alive."
- Roll Call Publisher Jim Glassman on Fox's Off the Record,
September 8.

Next Time Let
Them Shoot Us

"My goat [of the
week] is the U.S. military. The Pentagon acknowledged this week that they had
bulldozed over thousands of Iraqis during the war, burying them alive."
- Boston Globe reporter Michael K. Frisby on Fox's Off the
Record, September 15.

Getting Even

"My goat or bozo of
the week is Brent Bozell. He put out that sleazy Thomas ad, and he regularly
puts out a newsletter that zings journalists, including myself. This zing's
for you!"- Boston Globe reporter (and August MediaWatch
Janet Cooke Award recipient) Michael K. Frisby on Fox's Off the Record,
September 8.

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